Related papers: X-ray observations of the isolated black hole cand…
OGLE-2011-BLG-0462 is an isolated black hole of ~7 solar masses at a distance of 1.5 kpc identified thanks to the astrometric microlensing technique. It is the first specimen discovered of the large population of ~10^8 stellar-mass black…
We present the analysis of five black hole candidates identified from gravitational microlensing surveys. Hubble Space Telescope astrometric data and densely sampled lightcurves from ground-based microlensing surveys are fit with a…
Our knowledge of the birth mass function of neutron stars and black holes is based on observations of binary systems but the binary evolution likely affects the final mass of the compact object. Gravitational microlensing allows us to…
The long-duration Galactic-bulge microlensing event OGLE-2011-BLG-0462 produced relativistic astrometric deflections of the source star, which we measured using HST observations taken at 8 epochs over ~6 years. Analysis of the microlensing…
The detection of old neutron stars and black holes in isolation is one of the cornerstones of compact object astrophysics. Microlensing surveys may help on this purpose since the lensing mechanism is independent of the emission properties…
There are expected to be $\sim 10^8$ isolated black holes (BHs) in the Milky Way. OGLE-2011-BLG-0462/MOA-2011-BLG-191 (OB110462) is the only such BH with a mass measurement to date. However, its mass is disputed: Lam et al. (2022a,b)…
Gravitational microlensing may detect dark stellar remnants - black holes or neutron stars - even if they are isolated. However, it is challenging to estimate masses of isolated dark stellar remnants using solely photometric data for…
We discuss the observational manifestations of an isolated stellar mass black hole - the recently discovered microlens MOA-2011-BLG-191/OGLE-2011-BLG-0462. The data available for this object are used to calculate the density, temperature,…
Two independent groups reported the discovery of an isolated dark stellar remnant in the microlensing event OGLE-2011-BLG-0462 based on photometric ground-based observations coupled with astrometric measurements taken with the Hubble Space…
MACHO-96-BLG-5 is a microlensing event observed towards the bulge of the Galaxy with exceptionally long duration of $\sim 970$ days. The microlensing parallax fit parameters were used to estimate the lens mass $M=6^{+10}_{-3}$ M$_{\odot}$…
While dozens of stellar mass black holes have been discovered in binary systems, isolated black holes have eluded detection. Their presence can be inferred when they lens light from a background star. We attempt to detect the astrometric…
Most stellar remnants so far have been found in binary systems, where they interact with matter from their companions. Isolated neutron stars and black holes are difficult to find as they are dark, yet they are predicted to exist in our…
Galactic stellar-population-synthesis models, chemical-enrichment models, and long-duration Bulge microlensing events indicate about N_tot=(0.1-1) billion stellar-mass black holes reside in our Galaxy. We study X-ray emission from accretion…
Interferometric observations of gravitational microlensing events offer an opportunity for precise, efficient, and direct mass and distance measurements of lensing objects, especially those of isolated neutron stars and black holes.…
Gravitational microlensing can detect isolated stellar-mass black holes (BHs), which are believed to be the dominant form of Galactic BHs according to population synthesis models. Previous searches for BH events in microlensing data focused…
The analysis of the first three years of the OGLE data revealed 12 microlensing events of the Galactic bulge stars, with the characteristic time scales in the range $ 8.6 < t_0 < 80 $ days, where $ t_0 = R_E / V $. A complete sample of nine…
We report the first unambiguous detection and mass measurement of an isolated stellar-mass black hole (BH). We used the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to carry out precise astrometry of the source star of the long-duration (t_E~270 days),…
We report on the mass and distance measurements of two single-lens events from the 2015 \emph{Spitzer} microlensing campaign. With both finite-source effect and microlens parallax measurements, we find that the lens of OGLE-2015-BLG-1268 is…
Though stellar-mass black holes (BHs) are likely abundant in the Milky Way (N=10^8-10^9), only ~20 have been detected to date, all in accreting binary systems (Casares 2006). Gravitational microlensing is a proposed technique to search for…
Microlensing is the only known direct method to measure the masses of stars that lack visible companions. In terms of microlensing observables, the mass is given by M=(c^2/4G)\tilde r_E \theta_E and so requires the measurement of both the…